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amberdreamsBack to Part 4a
Kiim watched anxiously as the tall stranger broke free of the grasp of the braves who were trying to restrain him and careered blindly off towards the edge of the village.
Clearly the moonflower was making the young man crazy, and Kiim was as aware as the Beothuk holy man that if they couldn’t counteract the drug’s effects soon, there was a real risk that this Dean Winchester’s heart could give out under the strain. While her brother and his friends chased after the wayward stranger, and Nonosabawsut stood by helpless, too old to run after the fugitive, she decided it was time to take charge of the situation.
She ducked back into her tepee, grabbed the small leather flask containing the sedative she needed and swift as her spirit guide the deer, she ran to where the braves had tackled the big man to the ground. They appeared to be wrestling with him and losing.
“Leave him be!” she commanded, as Dean flailed and shouted what were pretty obvious obscenities at everyone, though fortunately nobody could understand a word he was saying.
Esiban obeyed with alacrity, persuaded more by the punch to the nose that Dean had just landed than his sister’s peremptory tone, and his friends were quick to follow suit. The Beothuk braves backed off gratefully, nursing a bloody nose, rapidly swelling black eye and two split lips between them. Kiim ignored them all, focussing her attention on the panting man kneeling in the dust at her feet.
Her careful stitches in his broken head wound had been ripped out and the wound was bleeding freely again, blood dripping down his face. But that was the least of her concerns as she moved very slowly and carefully to crouch down in front of him. He raised his bloody head to stare vaguely in her direction, his eyes unfocussed and wild. Kiim was very conscious that he could probably see very little except dark shapes against a too bright background, given the state of his pupils. Nonosabawsut had explained this to her before, that moonflower caused some people terrible pain from sunlight in particular, through an exaggerated sensitivity to light.
“Dean Winchester,” she said, keeping her voice gentle and soothing.
He said something harsh but with a questioning intonation, and she took that as an invitation to move closer and put a calming hand on his quivering arm. She flinched a little at the dry heat he was giving off; another warning sign that the drug was reaching a dangerous point for the young man. His body was burning itself up with no outlet, unable to sweat to cool itself down naturally.
He shuddered under her touch, but allowed her to run her hand down his shoulder and across his chest. His heart was beating fast as a frightened mouse, and she knew she was right to try this treatment as soon as possible.
“Dean Winchester, you must drink this potion, every single drop, and then you can rest while your body slows down.”
As she spoke, she brought the unstoppered flask to his lips, at the same time lifting his right hand and wrapping it around her own, so that he felt that he was controlling the action of drinking for himself. She knew he couldn’t understand her words, but hoped that he could hear her concern for him and recognise that it was genuine. When his fingers curled around hers and moved the flash to his dry lips, she hoped that was a victory.
Dean was in torment. Demons were rending him, coming at him from every side, and he was burning, burning, burning. He screamed and cried out and tried to get away, but they followed him, tearing at his flesh with their sharp, sharp claws, never letting up, never letting go. He thought it would go on forever, just like before, only this time there would be no angel to drag him out of the pit because Castiel was gone. Tears sprang up in his eyes, unbidden and unwanted. He would never see Sam again.
Then all of a sudden the demons did let go and seemed to vanish and he fell to his knees, not trusting the respite, heart still clattering nineteen to the dozen (and who said that these days? He didn’t know, maybe Sam, or Bobby?), his breath coming back but in harsh pants that seared his chest and made him feel ungrateful for the gift of air.
Slowly he became aware of a soft feminine voice saying his name, and he looked up, flinching at the whitelightknives that were thrusting through his skull. The silhouette of a woman was hunkered down in front of him, not close enough to crowd him, generously leaving him room to breathe. Mom? He tried to be a good boy, and held still when she reached out all careful-like, as if she was petting a strange dog, and touched a cool, cool, blessedly cool hand to his arm. All the while he allowed her touch, she was talking to him, her voice low and soothing even though he couldn’t understand a word.
There was a nagging sense that he should be remembering something important, because this girl (not Mom, younger, different) was familiar and nothing to do with Hell, but his thoughts were too jumbled for him to make sense of them. He wanted to push her away, afraid he’d hurt her because he was a bad man, he’d let himself get broken and done such evil things and she was too young and beautiful and pure to waste her time with such a sad, sorry, pitiful creature as him.
He wanted to pull her close and rest his aching head in her lap and let her run her slim fingers through his hair and cool his fevered brow with a single touch. He wanted to hide inside the dark curtain of her hair and never come out again.
He thought about saying yes, and please, and wondered why he wasn’t allowed to say those words any more. Saying no was so much harder, took more strength than he had left in him, but now that was all that was left for him to say. He seemed to have lost the reason for that somewhere in the moonflower fog, why he wasn’t important any more except in helping Sam cling to that solid No. But then he’d never been the one who mattered, that had always been Sam. Dean was the first born but the last in line, and being named the Michael sword had always been ridiculous, had always felt like a mistake - so maybe it just meant that the world had righted itself when Michael stole away Adam because he got bored waiting for Dean to say yes.
When the girl (Kiim her name was, he remembered now) pressed the open mouth of the leather flask to his lips he grumbled half-heartedly because it wasn’t a nice 30 year old malt, but just swallowed the bitter liquid without really questioning it, and was pathetically grateful for the velvety darkness that wrapped him in its embrace. He floated away formless, welcoming the fall into anonymity. It was blessed numbness and more than he deserved.
Kiim watched Dean’s throat bobbing as he swallowed, wondering at the dark reddish stubble that was growing on his chin and down his neck, so different from the men of the Beothuk who rarely grew facial hair like this, and never anything but raven-black. It seemed to add to this man’s significance to her people, that his hair glinted red-gold to match their sacred colour.
The stranger had calmed almost immediately at her touch - another wonder, and Nonosabawsut had told the braves to back away to leave her in peace to deal with him. He is called Dean Winchester, the holy man had told her, and hearing his full name certainly appeared to have a calming effect on the young man.
She was drawn to touch his face, and stroked her hand curious and tender over the sharp prickle of hair that was sprouting up on his pale cheek. Her finger traced the strange scattering of light brown speckles that covered his skin, so unusual and fascinating, just like the patterns on a blue jay’s eggshell. He leaned into her touch, his pupil-dark eyes closing as the sedative took hold. She let her palm curl around the throbbing vein in his neck and smiled as the racing heart-beat began to slow down. Nonosabawsut came over and helped her to lower his dead weight to the ground and she couldn’t help grinning when she heard her brother and his friends grumbling.
“I suppose we’ll have to carry him back to your tepee now. Next time you bring home a stray, Kiim, make it something smaller!”
“Yes, and lighter – how about a puppy, or a bird, or better still, a flower that you can put in your pouch and carry yourself!”
“Remind me again, why are we keeping him any way? He doesn’t seem very useful and he’s certainly not ornamental with that unhealthy pale skin and hair like a porcupine.”
Nonosabawsut saved Kiim the trouble of answering.
“If the Thunder god sees fit to say he will help this man, I hardly think we can refuse to do the same.”
The young braves fell silent at that, and Kiim noticed they were much more respectful and gentle in their handling of the unconscious man as they lifted him one more time and carried him back to her tepee.
Once Kiim was satisfied Dean was safely settled back onto the furs and blankets where he had spent his first night with the Beothuk, she went outside to discover Esiban her brother, Ishikode her cousin and several other members of the tribe gathered around Nonosabawsut. In such a small group of people, word travelled swifter than a flock of deer fleeing from wolves, and everyone wanted to know the story behind the pale stranger and the Thunder god. Kiim was curious too. It was a rare and wonderful thing for any holy man, even one as wise as her grandfather, to come across one of the gods in their spirit walking.
Nonosabawsut began to tell the story of Dean’s dream to his enraptured audience.
Thor had few weaknesses, but words had never been his forte. He had always been more a god of action than of verbalisation, so naturally Thor decided the best way to persuade his brother was to demonstrate.
Seizing the startled Loki, Thor whisked them away across Bifrost to Asgard. Let the emptiness of the playground of the Norse gods be a testament in itself.
Loki walked in bewildered silence through the echoing cavernous halls, kicking idly at the abandoned golden shod drinking horns that littered the straw covered floors, stepping round the heavy embroidered curtains that flapped in the cool breeze, stirring up the dust motes and setting them dancing in the sunlight that streamed through open shutters and illuminated the vacant passageways.
“Where is everyone?” He asked, when he finally returned to Odin’s feasting hall where Thor sat waiting patiently, alone. “Where is Freya? Heimdallr? Sigyn?”
“I don’t know.” Thor looked up, his face carefully schooled so his fear and sadness wasn’t showing. “I came here some weeks ago and found everything in disarray. Odin was gone, they said, and nobody knew where. Nothing new there, I thought, but Frigg was so agitated I said I would go seek out the All Father, and so I left to roam throughout Midgard and beyond. Everywhere I went the world tree Yggdrasill was withering and dying, and I found nothing but vacant lands where once giants and gods thrived and fought. Only this world of men remained, so I returned to tell everyone what I had discovered, only to find Asgard too was empty of all life.”
“This should not be possible. Where I have just come from, in the future, I am certain Asagard still existed, albeit weak and ineffectual. Odin and Baldr were dead, it is true, but only freshly killed by the fallen Archangel, Lucifer. How can they be missing here, now, if they were still alive to die then?” Loki protested. The dichotomy was making his head ache.
“But you said that you felt no power when you tried to reach for it, and that it took the strength of another god to send you back here. So even there, in whatever thread of time was being spun for us, Asgard was no longer a force to be reckoned with.” Thor hesitated for a moment, then seemed to come to a resolution.
“Come with me.”
Loki stared after his foster brother as Thor strode purposefully back outside, resenting the casual assumption that he would do as Thor commanded. Then he shrugged sulkily and followed.
The two gods halted at the edge of the shimmering rainbow bridge.
“Reach out now, my brother, tell me what you feel.”
Loki stared out along the path of Bifrost, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Reluctantly, he reached out.
“Well?” Thor asked after a few long moments of silence.
“I feel something is calling me. I feel different.” Loki said slowly.
“Do you not feel the strength you lost flowing back into your limbs? Can you feel the belief these people have in us – in the thunder and the chaos, in Wakinyan and Ksa? I think here we have many names, but to these people our form and our roles have meaning, significance, importance.”
Loki was breathing faster, his heart was beating stronger. Thor was right. This vast land felt like home. Its people, though scattered over many miles from ocean to ocean, were open and receptive and strong in the way that his Vikings had been when he’d first arrived in the Northlands, so many years ago. He had missed that connection with his people and was only now realizing the debilitating effect of its gradual erosion. Faith in Asgard had been slipping away, swamped by the worship of the White Christ, and Loki could see now that his old life had been getting moldy and stale for some time.
“Yes! Apart from within the Vinlanders’ settlement, these people are strong in their beliefs and I can sense their respect for our many aspects. They are fierce but they have humour. I like them.” Loki paused, thoughtful.
“They remind me of our Northmen, when we first came down from Asgard, you and I.”
He grinned at his brother, his eyes alight with the prospect of much new wickedness. “You are right, Thor. We should stay here where the land is vigorous, young and fresh, and ready for us to play with, you and I.”
Thor’s face lit up at his brother’s words and thunder rumbled in response.
“But first, I have a promise to keep. Together we must send the Winchesters home to meet their fate.”
Sam was aware of nothing but the resigned expression in Karlsefni’s clear blue eyes, so close to his own where their foreheads were pressed together, their position a bitter parody of a lovers’ embrace. The world had narrowed to those eyes, and the feel of the knife hilt in his hand. Sam’s fingers tensed as he shifted his grip to slide the blade home.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, so that only the êengill could hear him. The sorrow he felt was matched by his determination. Nothing and no one could be allowed to get in his way. If killing an innocent man was what he had to do in order to survive; if this was the only way he could step off this animal hide and find a way to send him and Dean back to their future, where Sam could finally atone for setting Lucifer loose on the world, then so be it. Sam wanted to look away, but he owed it to the Viking to bear witness to his bravery and to watch him die.
Barely an inch of Sam’s blade had pierced Karlsefni’s side when an almighty clap of thunder followed by a collective intake of breath from the audience of Vinlanders announced the return of the Norse gods.
“Hold!”
Sam found himself frozen in position at the command. The trembling of Karlsefni’s muscles straining to keep him in that awkward bow over Sam’s knee was reverberating through Sam’s body too, but neither human could move – Sam caught in Thor’s influence, Karlsefni because any movement was likely to cause Sam’s knife to cut deeper.
A low chuckle, and Loki was thrusting his grinning face into Sam’s, and Sam couldn’t so much as grit his teeth, let alone flinch away. Karlsefni however, grunted and twitched in surprise, and Sam could feel the give of flesh around the tip of the blade. Shit. Sam was going to murder the êengill by accident if someone didn’t do something quickly. Loki’s breath smelled like candy, which was just too weird, and a painful reminder of Gabriel.
“Look what we have here, Thor my brother. We left the children to their own devices for a moment or two and they are trying to kill each other. How delightful.”
“Leave them be, Loki.” Thor said, ignoring the collective gasp from the Vikings as they realised who had crashed their hólmganga. “That is not why we are here, and you know it well.”
Sam felt a firm hand take the knife from his nerveless grip, gently easing it out of the young êengill’s body. The red-headed god helped Karlsefni to his feet, and Gudrid was the first of the Vikings to recover her senses and rush to her husband’s side. Sam wondered if the two gods were going to leave him stuck in this awkward crouch. He could feel his own blood sticky and warm running down his bare arm, as well as Karlsefni’s blood gumming up his empty knife hand.
As the raging adrenaline from the fight ebbed out of him, Sam was chilled at how close he had come to killing a good man. He was weak with relief that he hadn’t been any quicker with his knife, and that the êengill looked like he had every chance of surviving to see his kid grow up, in spite of the blood running freely down his flank.
“Sam Winchester,” Thor said, and Sam found that he could move again. Embarrassingly he immediately fell back onto his butt, his balance shot by the sudden release of the force that had held him in place. He couldn’t help a scowl when he heard Loki’s malicious chuckle, but then Thor was there, offering him a hand up.
Sam stood eye to eye with the Norse god, while the Vindlanders all watched with avid curiosity. The grey-green gaze that held his own was fierce yet honest. It didn’t feel like any other pagan god encounter he’d experienced. Sam was the first to look away, seeking out Karlsefni in the watching crowd. He was relieved to find the Viking leader still on his feet and pressing a cloth to his wounded side without too much discomfort on his face.
Under the influence of the moonflower potion mixed with the new sedative Dean dreamt he was running. He felt energetic and young and the world was so full of exciting scents and sounds. His stride carried him far and fast and his legs never tired. His tongue lolled as he panted happily, the fragrant breeze ruffling his fur was intoxicating. After a while he became conscious of a warm presence at his shoulder matching his loping stride, pace for pace running alongside him in companionable silence. Somehow (as was the way of dreams) he didn’t need to turn his shaggy head to know that it was Sam there beside him, or that his brother was in the shape of his own spirit guide, a great cougar; lithe and puissant and lethal.
It didn’t matter where they were going, all that mattered was the motion, the exhilaration of speed, running for the sheer joy of it. He wanted the dream to last forever. Just him and Sam, running.
Of course, it couldn’t last, nothing good ever did.
The next time Dean woke up, everything was dark. It look him a few moments to realise this was not necessarily because it was night-time, but because his eyes seemed to be covered with something. When his hand went up to tug at the cloth that he discovered he was tied down and started to panic.
Before he could totally freak out, a familiar voice spoke up and there was the warm touch of strong fingers on his wrists, plucking at the ties there and holding him steady.
“Hey, hey, Dean. It’s okay, it’s me. Kiim just had to tie your hands down to stop you scratching at your eyes in your sleep.”
“Sammy.” He felt a constriction in his chest he hadn’t even been aware of loosen along with the strips of leather binding his wrists.
“How’d you find me? Are you okay? Where’ve you been?” His freed hand automatically went to undo the cloth around his eyes, but Sam was there again to stop him.
“I’m fine and I’ll fill you in on where I’ve been later, but you might want to keep the blindfold on a bit longer, Dean. Nonosabawsut said it might take a couple of days for your eyes to recover from the dose of Jimson weed he gave you.”
“That stuff was Jimson weed? Fuck. No wonder I feel like death warmed up.” Ignoring Sam’s advice, Dean yanked the blindfold down while struggling to sit up. It was a mistake.
Even though the light wasn’t bright – he was indoors after all – it stabbed into his eyes like knives. He gave an involuntary grunt and swayed where he sat, feeling nauseous and more grateful than he’d ever admit to that Sam’s solid bulk was there to lean on.
“Yeah,” Sam sounded exasperated and sympathetic at the same time as he took Dean’s weight without comment. “And you remember the saying Dad taught us about it’s effects - Blind as a bat, dry as a bone, red as a beet, mad as a hatter, and hot as an oven. So what symptoms have you got - apart from the blind as a bat part, then? You’ve always been madder than a whole town of hatters so we can’t count that one, and you don’t look too red…”
“Aw, shit, Sammy.” Dean allowed his brother to lower him back down but batted Sam’s hand away when he tried to readjust the cloth strip back over Dean’s eyes, grabbing it and pulling it back into place himself.
“Did Nono say how long before the effects wear off?” Dean mumbled, choosing to ignore Sam’s carefully disguised question about how he was feeling. The usual Winchester teasing banter allowed for a lot of avoidance in the place of outright lies. For instance, there was no way he was going to tell Sam that he wasn’t entirely sure how much of what was going on was real and how much was delusion woven by the drugs; or how for a moment there when the blindfold was off, and before the white light crashed through his skull like summer lightning, he’d seen the tawny-gold eyes and pink-black muzzle of the spirit cougar in the place of Sam’s face, and welcomed it like an old friend; or that he that he knew that Toto was lying alongside him because he was tangling his fingers in the big wolf’s thick fur as they spoke.
Nor was he going to mention to Sam that he was scared that when the moonflower’s influence had worked its way out of his system he would never see their spirit guides again, and that there was a part of him that didn’t want that to happen.
Sam didn’t allow Dean to lie back down, rather he ended up half propped up against Sam’s knee while his little brother brought a cup of cool water to his lips. Dean wanted to push Sam’s hand away and take the cup himself but somehow the touch of Toto’s warm flank and the coarse texture of the wolf’s fur kept his fingers where they were, anchored by his side, and he allowed Sam to feed him the much-needed drink.
“Guess that answers the dry as a bone part then,” Sam commented, a wry note in his voice that had Dean huffing. He hated it when Sam caught him out.
“Shut up and get me more water, bitch,” he said, trying and failing to hide a smile.
Three cups of water later, and Dean’s stomach was starting to feel a little bloated. He was also starving hungry, and couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. Man, he would kill for a burger and fries, followed by a giant piece of pie. Even the images in his brain of all that delicious food couldn’t stimulate any saliva. His mouth still felt dry, which told him the problem was the Jimson weed, and it was messing with more than his eyesight.
He turned to Toto, who was contemplating him with a thoughtful blue gaze.
“Hey buddy, what do you say we get the hell out of Dodge? Wonder if Sammy brought his ruby slippers to get us all home.”
“Dean? Who’re you talking to?”
Sam sounded more than a little freaked, and that was when Dean remembered Sam couldn’t see Toto. Aw shit. Now his little brother would think he was loco. And he was probably right. Nonosabawsut had dosed him with loco weed after all. So maybe Toto wasn’t really there, and that fucking awesome cougar wasn’t actually sitting behind Sam, licking one heavy paw with that pink furred tongue. Then he remembered that he was wearing a blindfold and shouldn’t be able to see anything at all, which kind of answered that one.
He was definitely still under the influence, sedative or no sedative. Great. A thought struck him then – how did he know whether Sam was even real? He could be an illusion too, and Dean could still be in the sweatlodge with Nonosabawsut, spaced out of his head like some freaking sixties hippie.
A large hand squeezed his bicep.
“I am real, I’m here in Kiim’s tepee with you, and Nonosabawsut and Kiim. Stop panicking, you’re gonna hyperventilate.”
Ok, so Sam sounded pissy enough to be real.
“I am not pissy!” Sam exclaimed, his tone belying his words as he sounding more aggrieved than ever. Aw shit, I must’ve said that out loud, Dean thought.
“Dean, you are saying all this crap aloud. You’ve been talking non stop to spirit guides and yourself and god knows who else since you woke up.”
A girl’s voice he recognised as Kiim said something Dean couldn’t understand, and he grabbed onto Toto to use the wolf’s very solid bulk to help him sit up again. His rational mind (and Sam) might be telling him the spirit guides were a figment of his imagination, but Toto felt very much present. Added to which, Dean could still see the animals, blindfold or no blindfold.
Once he was sat upright, and leaning his back against the warm (illusory?) wolf, he realised that his brother was having a one sided conversation with Kiim. At least it sounded one sided to Dean, as he could only understand the words Sam was using, not the Beothuk language.
“Dude!” He protested. “What the hell?”
Behind the blackness of the blindfold, Dean could see the golden-eyed cougar turn and pad its way over to where he sat, while he could only feel Sam’s presence by the brush of displaced air on his face. It was weird. Almost as weird as Sam speaking English and getting replies in an ancient language that he could obviously understand.
“Are you ok, Dean? Not feeling dizzy?” Sam had his concerned voice on but Dean was having none of it. He waved a hand in Sam’s general direction, ignoring the disconcerting impassive scrutiny of Sam’s cougar.
“I’m fine. Just help me up, will ya?”
Sam gripped his wrist and Dean pulled himself up onto his feet, wavered for a second until he felt Toto pressing up against his thigh. Dean grinned and let his left hand dangle by his side, fingers surreptitiously scratching at the wolf’s silky ear.
“See, m’fine. Now tell me how you can talk to my friend Kiim here, when I could only do it when I was in la la land.”
“Oh, yeah. About that. Come on outside, there’s a couple of people you need to meet before they try and send us back to the future.”
Back to the future. No doubt Sam had organised for Doc and Marty McFly to wait with the Delorean parked up outside. That would beat freaking angels, anyhow. Dean sniggered, but quietly, to himself, because that shit never got old but Sammy was usually too uptight to get it. He allowed Sam to keep hold of his elbow and guide him through the flap of the tepee, even though Toto was all the guidance he needed. He thought Sam’s cougar looked faintly approving, though it was hard to tell. The beast was almost as inscrutable as Sam could be sometimes.
Dean decided he’d call him Bagheera. The big cat stopped and looked over his shoulder at Dean with a look combining scorn and superiority in equal measures as if to say the Jungle Book, Dean, really? even more eloquently than Sam could have spoken the words.
“What?” Dean shrugged as he stepped into the warm touch of the sun. “Bagheera was a panther too.”
Against the dark backdrop provided by the backs of his eyelids and the muffling blindfold Dean could clearly see two figures waiting for him (sadly not Doc and McFly).
“Hey, Thor, and … Not Gabriel.” Dean said.
When Dean greeted Thor so casually, Sam had to quickly double check the blindfold was still in place. How the hell was Dean seeing the Norse gods when he couldn’t see the ground he was standing on, or his own brother? He didn’t realise he’d asked the question out loud - he was as bad as his drugged up big brother talking to himself - until Nonosabawsut provided him with the answer.
“Your brother still has one foot in the spirit world, so he can see things that walk in both worlds now, such as your weyekin spirit guides, as well as Ksa and the Thunder God. This ability will wear off as the moonflower’s influence fades.”
The Beothuk holy man fell silent as Thor walked towards their little group, Loki slouching along behind him, and Sam had to bite his tongue on the many questions he had about Dean’s condition. He didn’t want to give the pagan gods any excuse to change their minds about sending the Winchesters back home.
“Dean Winchester, we meet again.” Thor said. “As I promised, I found your brother and returned him to you.”
“Yeah, well thanks for that,” Dean answered. He was standing loose-limbed with every outward appearance of being unfazed by his enforced blindness, but Sam could see the tension in a tell-tale clenching and unclenching of his brother’s right fist that had him moving instinctively closer to Dean until they were shoulder to shoulder.
“So who is this guy who looks like Gabe?” Dean asked.
Sam winced as Loki’s face twisted with anger, regretting the fact that he hadn’t thought to tell Dean about Loki and Gabriel as soon as Dean had woken up.
“It was your Gabriel who stole my face, human.” Loki spat, thrusting himself into Dean’s space causing Dean to involuntarily take a step backwards, hands up in a gesture of appeasement. However, before Loki could elaborate his grievances further, Thor hastily stepped in between Dean and Loki.
“Peace, brother. This man had no hand in your captivity. No one alive now was complicit in what was done to you; you must let this rage go, and move on to the new life of which we have spoken.”
The tall god looked around at the spell-struck Beothuk and the two humans caught out of their time. When Thor caught Sam’s gaze, Sam finally allowed some of his own tension to be released. Thor would keep his word, and his next statement gave Sam the confirmation he had been looking for.
“But first, we must send these two travellers home.”
Loki reluctantly backed away from Dean, who let his hands drop to his sides. For the briefest of seconds, Sam thought he saw two shadowy creatures flanking Dean, a wolf on his left, and between Sam and his brother’s right side, a big cat of some description. But when he blinked and looked again, they were gone.
Thor and Loki were standing side by side now, like a mirror to the Winchesters, and Sam could feel the power building around the four of them, gods and men, two sets of mismatched brothers, like a storm gathering.
Dean grasped his arm.
“Wait!” Dean yelled over the roar of the wind that the two gods were whipping up, and Sam gaped at Dean as the breeze immediately dropped off at the rude interruption.
“Sorry, man, sorry, I just gotta…hold on a goddamn minute will ya?” Dean spluttered, an embarrassed flush on his cheeks. He turned to the Norse gods, Thor puzzled, Loki impatient, to make his plea.
“Can you just do whatever you did to Sammy, babel-fish me or whatever, so I can say something to Kiim and Nono here?”
Thor remained perplexed, while Loki rolled his eyes in an expression Sam would have recognised if he spent more time studying his own face in a mirror. The Norse Trickster shook his head, but snapped thumb and forefinger together in spite of himself.
“I think that’s it, Dean. Why don’t you try saying something and see if they can understand you now.” Sam said. He beckoned to Kiim and the holy man, who came over to stand in front of Dean. Sam took Dean’s hand off his own arm and placed it on Nonosabawsut’s shoulder.
“Is Kiim here too?” Dean asked, then smiled when the young girl reached out and took his other hand in hers. “Cool. So, before we go, I just wanted to say thank you for everything, okay? For stitching me up and taking me dream walking and for introducing me to these two…” Dean took his hand off Nonosabawsut’s shoulder to gesture at the empty space beside him, but the old man didn’t look at Dean as if he was crazy, just nodded in satisfaction as if he could see whatever it was Dean was seeing. Maybe Nonosabawsut had spent so many years with the spirits he had a foot in both worlds all the time, Sam thought.
“They will walk with you now wherever you go,” Nonosabawsut said. “The wolf will give you loyalty and the strength of your family, the panther will give your brother independence and courage. You will both do the right thing.”
Dean’s head dropped for a moment, and Sam thought about the burdens they both carried, and the near hopeless task that faced them and wondered why they were so determined to have Thor and Loki send them back. Then he squared his shoulders, and saw Dean mirroring his action, and he knew they had no choice. Not really. They would return, and they would get those two remaining Horsemen’s rings, even Death’s, because they couldn’t give up the fight.
“Are you ready now?” Thor asked.
The Winchesters nodded. Time to go home.
Thor stands with Loki at the foot of a slowly paling Bifrost, thinking that this is like watching one of nature’s rainbows fade, when the wind sweeps the rain clouds away and the sun asserts its sway over the world. This place that the Winchesters had called America, but that the red-loving Beothuk and the Mi'kmaq and the Maliseet and the Peskotomuhkati just call the Land, smells like spring to Thor, like fresh earth after a cleansing storm.
The small pocket of Northmen is enough to anchor the Norse gods in their old forms for the moment, but Thor can feel the tug of the beliefs of the People, and knows his brother feels it too. He is touched be a certain sadness that comes with endings, but at the same time, he tingles with the exhilaration that comes with new ventures. Thor’s red mane crackles with static, and Loki flashes him a look that is full of mischief mingled with anticipation.
“Come, brother,” Thor says, smiling. “A new world awaits us, and we have work to do.”
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Date: 2012-10-12 05:17 pm (UTC)I did wonder what happened to Loki when Gabriel stole his face - I always wondered if he just took his place or physically possessed him.
And Mjölnir, yay! (Still giddy from seeing it in 8x02, lol)
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Date: 2012-10-12 05:32 pm (UTC)You are a quick reader as well as a quick writer *g*
Thanks!